Key Findings Reveal Enterprises Are Depending On Limited Reach Legacy Communications - Such as Email and Newsletters; Employee Engagement Remains Unmeasured - Regardless of Clear Ties to Bottom-line; and Most Organizations Have a Desire to Improve the Employee Experience

Earlier this year the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) published a report Cloud Adoption, Practices and Priorities. Its main focus was to tease out the level of shadow IT in organisations, but it also looked at enterprises’ approach to cloud governance – how an organisation develops and imposes policies and procedures around cloud usage.

US company SkyHigh Networks has produced “The Definitive Guide to Cloud Security.” Comprehensive it certainly is. It's 43 pages list well over 100 “Key questions IT security should be able to answer related to …” various aspects of cloud or “key requirements for enabling secure…” access to various cloud services.

Earlier this year, in a post titled {cslimited}Convergence? You ain't seen nothing yet{/cslimited}, I commented on a press release from Frost & Sullivan that identified four types of convergence — products, technologies, industries and competition. I said: “The elephant in the room here is something not specifically mentioned: it is the Internet of Things, a growing area of IT that some industry figures are tipping to become a major future disrupter.”

IDC predicts that more than 65 percent of enterprise IT organisations will commit to hybrid cloud before 2016. “Faced with new digital business initiatives, IT organisations are looking for low-cost, low-risk opportunities to increase agility,” IDC says.

In 2010 research firm Gartner placed cloud computing at the “peak of inflated expectations” in its famous hype cycle. How quickly things have changed! Companies that held off embracing cloud now find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as those that were early adopters become mature users of cloud services and start to get some strategic benefits, beyond those initially identified for cloud.

For four years IT industry trade association, CompTIA has been producing an annual Trends in Managed Services Study. Of the findings contained in its latest edition, published in June, it said: “Organisations are growing more knowledgeable and comfortable with the concept of managed services and are making more use of the option for their information technology (IT) needs,.”

Over the last couple of blogs I've been looking at a series of reports published by the Harvard Business Review as part of The Enterprisers Project, an online community set up to discuss the evolving role of CIOs and how they can maximise their impact on businesses faced with the need to successfully embrace the forces of digital disruption.

The US-based Cloud Security Alliance is proposing to set up a scheme that will enable organisations to anonymously report data breaches, in the interests of enabling others to take steps to prevent them becoming victims of similar attacks.

According to research firm Frost & Sullivan, hybrid IT is fast becoming the new normal across organisations in Asia-Pacific. F&S says that, in addition to helping enterprises drive digital disruption, their use of hybrid IT is also helping them deliver a better customer experience and to introduce business innovation.